2018 sales operations optimization study
TRANSCRIPT
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© 2018 Miller Heiman Group. All rights reserved.
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study
2018
Sales Operations
Optimization Study
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 2
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INSIDE THIS REPORT
This is CSO Insights’ first annual Sales Operations
Optimization Study. It draws upon detailed responses
provided by more than 300 study participants from all
over the world to create a snapshot of sales operations
as it is today.
The increasing recognition of the role ops can
play in improving sales performance has many
parallels with the emergence of sales enablement
as an indispensible dimension of the modern sales
organization. This new report takes its place alongside
our annual sales enablement studies as part of CSO
Insights’ continuing efforts to advance the science of
selling through research.
MAJOR FINDINGS
Sales operations is widely established as a
dedicated function in the tech industry and in
larger companies. The majority of study participants
reported that their organizations have a dedicated
sales operations team, with technology and quarter-
billion-dollar companies leading the way.
Sales leaders need, and expect, decision-making
data from sales operations. When asked to name sales
operations “areas that need the most improvement in
the next 24 months” the highest-ranked answer was,
“deliver key decision-making data to executives.”
This fits with broad trends in sales analytics and the increasing need for planning to be informed by more
detailed and specific information.
Sales operations has a very wide range of
responsibilities. The study identified 16 business activities and measured five levels of involvement in each.
A formal forecasting approach, with accuracy
targets and measurement in place, outperforms all
other approaches. Subjective, “gut feel” forecasting
gets sub-par results. Formal, structured forecasting
processes lead to higher win rates for forecasted
deals.
CRM systems have been almost universally
implemented, but adoption rates are a different
story. Only 47% of study participants reported an
adoption rate of greater than 90%. High adoption
combined with a rigorous sales process sets the
basis for achieving better and more predictable sales
results.
Sophisticated new sales tools are on the rise, but…
New tools present new challenges, particularly in the
areas of training, integration, and getting full value
from the investment.
Executive Summary
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Chapter 2: Sales Operations Areas of Responsibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Chapter 3: Sales Operations’ Priorities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Chapter 4: Forecasting Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Chapter 5: Utilization of CRM and Sales Effectiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Chapter 6: Sales Tools & Technology for Sales Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Chapter 7: Takeaways and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 5
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Chapter 01 Introduction
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Almost no sales leader would dispute the need to
have some sort of sales operations function in place.
However, when it comes to clearly defining sales operations’ purpose and primary responsibilities,
asking ten sales leaders will lead to ten different
answers: from having a small team that creates
reports and forecasts up to a strategic function that
serves as the right hand of the sales leader and is
responsible for the entire sales system.
These same sales leaders are also concerned with
the accelerated rate of change that’s occurring
in their business. In our 2017 World Class Sales
Practices Study, over 70% of respondents indicated
that the rate of change in “customer expectations”
and “competitive activity” was increasing noticeably
or significantly. Sales leaders are compelled by these concerns to expand their awareness of new
threats and new opportunities to develop their own
competitive advantage.
And where there’s opportunity, there are vendors.
We’ve seen a tremendous explosion of sales
productivity tools leveraging next-generation
capabilities like artificial intelligence, predictive analytics and machine learning. But making bets on
these technologies can be risky. As a result, more
and more sales operations leaders are being asked
to understand the range of potential of these new
technologies and to help sales leaders make the right
bets on new ways to align with their customers buying
journeys and improve their sellers’ productivity.
CSO Insights has studied and tracked the function of
sales enablement, documenting its growth from 2013,
when only 19.3% of companies had a dedicated sales
enablement “person, program, or function,” to today,
when 59.2% of companies have a dedicated sales
enablement initiative or function. This emergence of
sales enablement as a business function means that
the role of sales operations is going through its own
evolution and clarification.
The purpose of the 2018 Sales Operations Optimization
Study is to clarify what sales operations actually does, its
approaches, current priorities, areas of improvement,
and of course, the related business impact.
Our preliminary definition of sales operations (which will be refined in our future research) is this: Sales
operations is a strategic function, designed to provide
a platform for sales productivity and performance
by providing integrated methods, processes, tools,
technologies and analytics for the entire sales force and
senior executives.
Sales operations is focused on designing and running the
sales system that provides the foundation that the sales
force needs to be both productive and effective. Sales
enablement builds on this foundation and equips all
salespeople (ideally all customer-facing professionals) and their managers with consistent and effective
enablement services (mainly training, content, coaching and tools) so that they can be valuable, relevant and differentiating in every customer interaction. By
necessity, there is overlap between these two functions
and probably will be for years to come. But, we expect that
they will continue to narrow in their focus and specialize
in their services. How they decide to do this will depend
on the positive performance impact that their services
deliver. CSO Insights will continue to identify, document
and study these emerging best practices.
Chapter 1: Introduction
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 7
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Global Participation
We truly appreciate the support of the more than
300 study participants from all over the world who
invested the time to give us their input and help us
ensure that this is a worldwide study.
The chart provides a breakdown of participation by
geography. While just over half of the input came from
organizations in North America, the international
communities were also well represented.
In addition, within the geographies, we invited the
participation of organizations with mature sales
operations functions to ensure we had meaningful
data for the analysis.
The following two charts present an overview of
the high-level makeup of the industries that are
represented in the study, as well as the organizations’
sizes in terms of total annual revenues.
Survey Participants by Region
60.2%LATAM
NA
6.3%
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23.4%
EMEA
APAC
10.1%
Survey Participants by Industry
15.1%TECHNOLOGY
MANUFACTURING
37.7%
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17.6%
OTHERPROFESSIONALSERVICES
29.6%
Survey Participants by Company Revenue
11.6%
18.6%
$10M - $50M$250M - $1B
$50M - $250M
21.3%
© 2018 MILLER HEIMAN GROUP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
24.4%
> $1B < $10M
24.1%
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 8
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The participating roles are also of interest.
The largest group consists of sales operations
professionals (40.3%), followed by senior sales management (24.2%) and executive management (19.8%). Additional roles such as sales enablement professionals, salespeople, frontline sales managers
and roles from related functions cover the remaining
15.7% of study participants.
Sales operations is widely established in the
technology industry and in larger organizations
with annual revenues higher than $250M.
Every organization with a sales force has
operational requirements that ensure their sellers
are productive and capable of doing their jobs. This
doesn’t necessarily mean that the organization has
a dedicated sales operations team. Sometimes,
these responsibilities are shared by individuals from
non-sales operations teams like marketing, finance, IT or HR.
The majority (63.9%) of our study participants reported having a dedicated sales operations team,
while 36.1% reported that their sales operations
responsibilities were spread across multiple teams.
Of these, 7.5% indicated that they planned to create
a dedicated sales operations function within the next
12 months.
When we looked at this question across industries,
we found that over 80.5% of all organizations in the
technology industry have a dedicated sales operations
function. Across all of the other industries combined,
only 54.6% of their organizations have a dedicated
sales operations team.
Percentage of Organizations with Dedicated Sales Operations Team
28.6%
NO / FUNCTIONIS SHARED ACROSS TEAMS
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7.5%
PLANNED
YES
63.9%
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 9
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It’s an interesting trend we already observed with
sales enablement, where the technology industry
has been and still is the leading industry: 79.1% of all
organizations in tech already have a dedicated sales
enablement initiative or function, compared to an
average of 50% across other industries.
It is noteworthy that an organization’s size impacts its
sales operations efforts. The above chart shows that
dedicated ops teams are less prevalent in smaller
organizations (less than $10M in revenues), where only 37.3% have a dedicated team, compared to large
organizations (annual revenues higher than $250M), where more than 80% have a dedicated team.
Sales Operations’ Focus Areas of Improvement
Sales operations covers a large variety of activities
and responsibilities (which we will discuss in the next chapter) and has to be flexible in how they support their executive team and sales leaders. Study
participants said that in the next 24 months, they
would most like to see improvement in these areas:
“Deliver key decision-making data to executives”
tops the list. We can think of two reasons for this:
First, executives, by necessity, are being asked to
be more data driven in all aspects of their business
and decision-making. Sales leaders’ requirements
regarding the quality and the quantity of the data
they need for their decision-making processes are
becoming deeper and broader at the same time,
based on the emergence of the digital age and the
explosion of sales analytics and intelligence tools.
Second, sales operations’ priority has always been
the operational productivity of their sellers. They are
responsible for delivering a sales system, featuring
primarily the CRM. Taking advantage of the CRM
(and all of their sales tools) by providing insights and intelligence is becomingly increasingly more
complex and sophisticated. Highlighting this area for
improvement is clearly an indication that they feel
this is important, but also indicates that this may be
one of their biggest challenges.
$10M - $50M< $10M
Percent of Dedicated Sales Operations Teams by Company Revenue
37.3%
56.1%
74.0%
80.6%
$50M - $250M $250M - $1B > $1B
81.6%
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Areas That Need Most Improvement in the Next 24 Months
7.3%33.1%59.6%
DELIVER KEY DECISION-MAKING DATA TO EXECUTIVES
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6.7%43.6%49.7%
SALES ENABLEMENT
14.6%36.5%48.9%
IMPROVED FORECAST ACCURACY
Low Priority
High Priority
Medium Priority
17.2%40.8%42.0%
DRIVE OPERATIONS IMPROVEMENTS WITH MINIMAL DISRUPTION
13.8%46.1%40.1%
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT OF EFFICIENCY THROUGH AUTOMATION
18.2%42.5%39.3%
CONSISTENTLY ENGAGE AND EMBRACE IMPACT FROM CUSTOMERS
18.9%44.2%36.9%
CONNECT TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGIES TO THE SALES ORGANIZATION
14.4%48.9%36.7%
ENSURE ACCURATE OPERATIONAL DATA
23.5%
38.8%
30.8%
IMPROVED TERRITORY DEFINITION AND COMPENSATION MANAGEMENT
33.3%27.9%
CHANNEL ENABLEMENT
45.7%
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 11
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It’s not surprising that sales enablement is listed as
the second most important area of improvement.
Sales operations and sales enablement are still very
closely linked, especially in large organizations (with more than $1B in revenues) where sales enablement teams are more than twice as likely to report into
sales operations (37.3% vs. 17.6% for all other company sizes).
From an effectiveness perspective, survey data
consistently shows that sales enablement is not
achieving its objectives. In our 2017 Sales Enablement
Optimization Study, only 34.6% of our respondents
indicated that they were meeting or exceeding
the majority of their expectations. Although sales
operations professionals said their involvement
in sales enablement was mostly effective (65.5% reported meeting or exceeding expectations for sales
enablement), it’s clear that sales enablement and sales operations have to collaborate closely to ensure
productivity and performance across the sales force.
Providing methods and processes to create accurate
forecasts is one of the core responsibilities of all
sales operations teams, and improving forecast
accuracy is an ongoing challenge. While there is
more data available than ever, data accuracy is still
suspect. There is also a need for improved clarity
on how to use structured coaching sessions around
opportunities and pipelines to improve forecasting.
Leaving the forecasting process up to the managers
is not the most effective way to ensure forecast
accuracy. For more details, see Chapter 4.
The fourth area identified for improvement, the ability to drive operational improvements with
minimal disruption, means that sales operations, as
the designer, maintainer and developer of the sales
system, must “fix the plane while it’s flying.” And the fifth area, continuous improvement of efficiency through automation, is based on the same challenge
but more focused on deriving the maximum value
from the growing number of available technologies.
What You Can Expect From This Report
Now that we’ve shared the mechanics of the 2018
Sales Operations Optimization Study, let’s spend a
moment talking about what’s in this report. Chapter
2 looks at what sales operations is responsible for
in the organizations that responded to our study.
Because this list is a long one, we’ll spend Chapter 3
discussing how to prioritize these activities.
Chapters 4, 5 and 6 go deeper into a few of the major
areas of responsibility, namely forecasting, CRM (with a focus on utilization) and sales effectiveness, and other sales tools and technologies. Finally, we’ll close
with a chapter that summarizes our key takeaways
from the study and recommends actions you can take
to improve your sales operations discipline
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 12
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Chapter 02 Sales Operations’ Areas of Responsibility
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 13
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Introduction
As sales continues to evolve from an “art” to a
“science,” the role of sales operations expands,
incorporating a broad pool of new activities, both
strategic and tactical. In fact, just about anything that
involves a process, a technology or a spreadsheet
may well find its home in sales operations.
Based on a series of interviews with sales operations
leaders as well as the results of our previous studies,
we identified a list of 16 activities commonly undertaken by sales operations functions. For each, we sought to
understand just how involved sales operations was
in the activity. In order to break this list down into
manageable chunks, we have organized this activity
analysis into four buckets: Strategic Planning Support,
Sales Performance Analysis, Sales Readiness and
Enablement and Technology Management.
Strategic Planning Support
Periodically, usually in preparation for the onset of
the fiscal year, sales leaders undertake the planning activities needed to translate the organization’s go-
to-market initiatives into a set of sales strategies
(“go-to-customer” strategies). Leaders define target markets, territory assignment methods, channel
coverage and more. Sales operations can be a key
planning partner in these activities, as they often
have the access and skill sets to collect the available
data, build the models to test scenarios, validate
assumptions and layer the needed details into an
overarching strategy.
Chapter 2: Sales Operations’ Areas of Responsibility
Strategic Planning Support Activities
21.7%
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4.8%
CUSTOMER ANALYSIS & REPORTING
35.5% 28.6% 9.4%
24.2% 11.7%
SALES ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE
27.0% 28.9% 8.2%
20.1% 17.6%
COMPENSATION MODELING
26.1% 23.6% 12.6%
23.9% 13.5%
TERRITORY MODELING
32.4% 21.1% 9.1%
24.5% 13.5%
CHANNEL DEFINITION
34.9% 19.5% 7.6%
Heavily InvolvedNot Involved Somewhat Involved Regularly Involved Leadership Role
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 14
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Sales operations teams were “regularly involved” in
each of these activities. Over a third reported “heavy
involvement” or a “leadership role” in the areas
of Customer Analysis (38.0%) and Sales Structure Definitions (37.1%).
1. Customer Analysis & Reporting – Sales
operations assists the sales and marketing
organizations with populating targeted customer
segments with identifying data and identifying
markers for ideal customer profiles. This can create great value for the organization. Almost
half (48.2%) of respondents surveyed in the 2017 World-Class Sales Practices Study said that
their ability to identify which customers to focus
prospecting efforts on needed improvement or
major redesign.
2. Sales Organization Structure Definition – Sales
operations can help determine the potential
impact of organizational design decisions. What
happens if you were to reorganize the division
of sales work into hunter/farmers? What would
happen if you increased or decreased manager
span of control? How might you use the available
data to stress test the idea of creating a key account
management layer of sellers? The ability of sales
operations to support these decisions is critical
to long-term success, which is underscored
by the 2017 World-Class Sales Practices Study
finding that only 39.4% of organizations said their “structure allowed them to easily adapt to our
customer’s changing needs.”
3. Sales Compensation Modeling – Sales operations
can help leaders model compensation strategies
and determine the impact of changes, identify
risks and suggest alternatives levers to pull for
optimal impact. Ultimately, sales operations is
also often responsible for the administration of
the plan. Our World-Class study also highlighted
compensation planning as an area in need of
change as only 41.2% of respondents agreed
or strongly agreed that their compensation
policies and metrics were aligned with business
objectives.
4. Territory Modeling – Sales operations helps
model the impact of territory design decisions.
And as a follow-on activity, sales operations may
be responsible for account allocation, territory
balancing and other ongoing administration of
the territory management system.
5. Channel Definition – This includes activities for
determining how channels play a role in the sales
distribution model and how the mix of direct and
channel sellers will provide adequate coverage
without excessive channel conflict.
Sales Performance Analysis
The next set of activities covers areas where sales
operations creates and manages data collection
processes and provides analysis to leaders to assist
in the execution of sales strategies.
Again, sales operations reported regular involvement
in each of these activities with nearly half reporting
heavy involvement or a leadership role in Forecasting
(46.8%), Sales Performance Metrics (45.3%) and Sales Process Definition (44.3%).
1. Forecast & Pipeline Management – Operations
often owns the processes, systems and tools
needed to create and refine forecasts for use by senior executives and other stakeholders.
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 15
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Operations is ultimately responsible for ensuring
forecast accuracy in partnership with sales
leadership. This was the activity most likely
to have high involvement of all those queried.
Forecasting, as a discipline, is addressed in
greater detail in Chapter 4 of this report.
2. Seller Performance Metrics – Sales performance
metrics are usually embedded in a range of sales
systems. Using the output from these systems,
operations builds dashboards and reports that
provide visibility into team and individual seller
performance metrics. These reports give sales
leaders, managers and salespeople the insights
they need to improve results. While organizations
respondents also reported heavy involvement
in this activity, 47.5% also said that their sales
operations team needed improvement or major
redesign when it came to “providing managers
with metrics they need.”
3. Sales Process Definition – This activity involves
defining and refining the selling processes that align with targeted customers’ buying
processes. In order to have a “dynamic” process,
organizations must define it, train to it, and reinforce it so that it becomes a natural part of
selling. Then, they must continuously refine the process using analytics. While organizations
reported heavy involvement in this too, only 27.9%
felt like they had achieved the level of a dynamic
sales process within their organization.
4. Leadership Communication – These activities
focus on synthesizing the available data into
insights that sales leaders need to most effectively
execute the sales plan and establishing a regular
communications cadence to get these actionable
insights into the hands of leaders at the right time.
It is important to do this well because leaders rely
on these insights to make informed, data-driven
decisions. Although still “regularly” involved,
operations functions were much less likely to be
heavily involved here.
Sales Performance Analysis
14.8%
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5.7%
FORECAST & PIPELINE MGMT
32.7% 30.8% 16.0%
18.9% 5.7%
SELLER PERFORMANCE METRICS
30.2% 30.2% 15.0%
18.6% 11.3%
SALES PROCESS DEFINITION
25.8% 30.5% 13.8%
25.5% 12.6%
LEADERSHIP COMMUNICATION
33.6% 21.7% 6.6%
Heavily InvolvedNot Involved Somewhat Involved Regularly Involved Leadership Role
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 16
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Sales Readiness and Sales Cycle Support
The next group of activities includes tasks that
sales operations executes to assist sellers in most
effectively and efficiently moving opportunities through the funnel.
Although less involved than in the analytical activities
above, sales operations reported being at least
regularly involved in each activity. A notable number
of sales operations teams reported “no involvement”
in Deal Desk (17.0%) and RFP management (21.7%).
1. Sales Enablement – Enablement includes the
provision of coaching, training and content
services to customer-facing resources and their
managers. While our 2017 Sales Enablement
Optimization Report shows that enablement
is increasingly a separate function, reporting
directly to sales leadership, it is not uncommon
to have the enablement function nested under
sales operations. The key is involvement. While
not necessarily owners of sales enablement,
sales operations should be completely integrated
with the enablement team. Otherwise, there may
be a disconnect between sales process and sales
methodology, low adoption of key technologies as
well as other pitfalls.
2. Deal Desk / Quote Management – Often focused
on non-standard deals, deal desks help with
everything from pricing, establishing discount
levels, configuring solutions and managing quotes through to shepherding deals through
contracting processes.
3. RFP / Proposal Management – Such activities
help salespeople use objective go/no-go criteria
to determine whether to respond to an RFP,
pull together boilerplate language, orchestrate
responses from corporate functions, project
manage proposal responses, etc.
Sales Readiness & Sales Cycle Support
15.4%
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5.4%
SALES ENABLEMENT
33.6% 30.5% 15.1%
23.6% 17.0%
DEAL DESK/QUOTE MGMT
25.8% 25.2% 8.4%
21.1% 21.7%
RFP/PROPOSAL MGMT
28.9% 21.1% 7.2%
Heavily InvolvedNot Involved Somewhat Involved Regularly Involved Leadership Role
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 17
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Technology Management
Sales operations is also commonly responsible for
managing key technologies used by the sales team
(with varying degrees of partnership with IT) as well
as the management of the data within these systems
and the alignment and integration between them.
See Chapter 6 for a more detailed list of the actual
technology tools in use.
Operations teams reported high involvement in
technology. In fact, these were the activities in
which operations most commonly took a leadership
role, in particular, CRM Definition/Update Strategy (24.5%) and Sales Tool Management (20.1%). The notable exception was a lack of involvement with
the Marketing Automation system. As noted below,
this is not surprising given the continued issues
organizations experience with sales and marketing
integration.
1. CRM Definition & Update Strategy – Sales
operations typically owns CRM and makes the
decisions on when to update it, how to cleanse
it, etc. They also are responsible for designing
and managing the sales technology stack,
which typically has CRM as the backbone. This
is no easy task, as adoption of, and productivity
improvements from, CRM remain elusive. See
Chapter 5 for a more complete discussion of CRM.
2. Sales Tool & Technology Management – Sales
operations is the first point of contact when the sales organization wants to deploy a sales-specific technology. They own the sales technology stack
and manage the deployment and integration
of such tools, e.g., sales enablement content
management tools, virtual coaching tools, lead
scoring tools and more. For more on the tools
sales operations uses, see Chapter 6.
3. Operational & Technology Change Management
– In our recent World-Class Sales Practices Study,
participants noted massive changes on the horizon
in product, market and competition. Further, sales
leaders said the #1 thing they were worried about
Technology Management
20.8%
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6.6%
CRM DEFINITION & UPDATE STRATEGY
25.8% 22.3% 24.5%
16.7% 8.1%
SALES TOOL MGMT
27.4% 27.7% 20.1%
20.8% 10.7%
OPERATIONAL & TECH CHANGE MGMT
28.3% 28.0% 12.2%
31.4% 19.8%
MARKETING AUTOMATION MGMT
30.5% 13.3% 5.0%
Heavily InvolvedNot Involved Somewhat Involved Regularly Involved Leadership Role
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 18
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versus 12 months previously was transforming
their sales organization. Each and every change to
the sales organization cascades into a systems and
technology change for operations. Coupled with
the evolving nature of technologies, operations is
in a perpetual state of managing change.
4. Marketing Automation Management – This includes
setting up and managing the lead flow processes between the marketing automation system and the
CRM. As you can see, of all the common activities,
respondents reported the least involvement with
this technology. This makes sense if you consider
that our 2017 World-Class Sales Practices Study
respondents found a serious alignment gap
remaining between sales and marketing. Only
31.1% said that sales and marketing had a formal
process for jointly nurturing leads, and only 26.1%
had a mutually accepted definition for lead scoring.
As we look through the activities overall, a common
theme emerges. Sales operations is regularly involved
in almost all of these activities, yet they rarely have a
leadership position. This is a reflection of the position and the challenge of sales operations. Sales operations
is asked to do a lot, but usually downstream of the
strategy-setting process. However, as technologies
continue to evolve and play a larger role in sales
success, sales operations teams may well have an
opportunity to become much more strategic, making
recommendations to sales leaders on what to do versus
just modeling the impact of previously made decisions.
Making Decisions on Where to Spend Time
With such a large set of responsibilities and a fixed set of people and budget to work with, sales operations
leaders must continuously prioritize and re-prioritize
their activities, ebbing and flowing with the natural
movement of the sales calendar year, e.g., territory
setting time, end of quarter forecasting, annual
technology upgrade schedules, and flexing to invest time in activities with the greatest payoff. There is
never enough time or resources to do it all, and most
(if not all) sales operations functions are haunted by a large backlog of projects.
There is an expression in the military: “What the
General finds interesting, I find fascinating.” The clearest direction on where to best spend operations
time comes from the Chief Sales Officer. Sales operations works on what will most benefit the go-to-customer strategy as laid out by sales leadership.
However, as noted in Chapter 3 on priority setting, this
does not have to be a top-down mandate. As sales
operations becomes a more strategic and integral
part of the sales ecosystem, there are opportunities to
proactively shape the identity of its function and scope.
As such, we looked again at each of the 16 activities and
compared their effectiveness (as reported by participants) to key sales performance metrics. That analysis yielded
several activities where a high level of effectiveness was
linked to higher sales metrics. If given the opportunity,
these may be places where a sales operations function
could usefully advocate for greater involvement.
In the table below, we look at two key performance
metrics: the percentage of salespeople making/
exceeding their quota goals and the win rates of
forecasted deals. In each case, we compare these
metrics across two groups: those who said that the
listed activity was a strength in their organization and
those who saw it as an opportunity for improvement.
Those reporting strong performance in an activity had
better sales results than those who saw these activities
as gaps.
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 19
© 2018 Miller Heiman Group. All rights reserved.
* Based on what we know about the evolution of sales
enablement, we see the opportunity for the operations
function to offer a strong partnership with a distinct
sales enablement function, both reporting up into senior
sales leadership. Refer to our 2017 Sales Enablement
Optimization Study to learn more.
Sales Operations’ Scope is Broad but Leadership
Remains Rare
Survey participants reaffirmed that sales operations has a very broad range of responsibilities, with
respondents reporting that they were at least
“regularly” involved in 15 of the 16 activities listed.
Heaviest involvement was noted in areas that would
typically be expected from operations, such as
forecasting, CRM and sales tool management.
Quota Attainment Win Rates
Needs Improvement or Major Redesign
Meets/Exceeds Expectations
Needs Improvement or Major Redesign
Meets/Exceeds Expectations
Sales Org Structure 55.0% 66.2% 49.1% 59.7%
Sales Process Def. 53.4% 63.7% 44.1% 59.3%
Sales Enablement* 55.4% 64.5% 47.0% 60.7%
Territory Modeling 57.2% 64.7% 49.5% 60.6%
Forecasting 60.2% 62.4% 48.9% 59.7%
Sales Perf. Metrics 60.1% 63.0% 49.1% 59.4%
At the same time, however, there was clearly not
one template that delineated sales operations’
responsibilities, and opportunities for operations to
take a leadership role remain rare.
© 2018 MILLER HEIMAN GROUP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Heavily Combined
47.8%
Leader
Sales Tool & Technology Management27.7% 20.1%
46.8%CRM Definition & Update Strategy22.3% 24.5%
46.8%Forecast & Pipeline Management30.8% 16.0%
45.6%Sales & Sales Support Enablement30.5% 15.1%
45.2%Sales Performance Metrics30.2% 15.0%
44.3%Sales Process Definition30.5% 13.8%
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 20
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Chapter 03 Sales Operations’ Priorities
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 21
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We’ve said that sales operations teams are involved
in a wide range and variety of responsibilities: day-
to-day technology management, periodic support
for new sales tool rollouts or sales enablement
initiatives, monthly or quarterly delivery of analytic
packages, and even annual planning exercises. Like
many other teams, they also have limited staff, budget
and bandwidth. So, how do they prioritize?
Chapter 3: Sales Operations’ Priorities
• Formal Charter, Long-Term Vision – 21.1% of
respondents indicated that “Sales operations has
a formal charter that covers a long-term plan
for functional vision / strategy, clearly defined operational services, a technological roadmap,
and success metrics, which we track regularly.” In
contrast, in our 2017 Sales Enablement Optimization
Study, only 13.1% of sales enablement teams had
a formal charter and vision.
• Priorities Set by Non-Ops Leadership – 18.2%
of respondents indicated that “Sales operations
is a support role whose functional priorities are
established by other leadership teams, limiting
long-term planning.”
• Focus on Operational & Technology-Based
Programs – 32.1% of respondents indicated that
“Sales operations coordinates priorities with
executive leadership, but most initiatives are
focused primarily on operational and technology-
based programs.”
• Focus on Analytic Support for Executive Decision-
Making – 28.6% of respondents indicated that
“Sales operations coordinates priorities with
executive leadership, but most initiatives are
focused primarily on analytic support for strategic
executive decision-making.”
The percentage of respondents who reported their
organizations were focused on operational and
technology-based programs was lower than we
expected – not much higher than those focusing
primarily on analytic support for decision-making.
How Sales Operations Priorities Are Set
28.6%FOCUS ONOPERATIONAL TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT
FOCUS ON ANALYTICSTRATEGIC SUPPORT
32.1%
© 2018 MILLER HEIMAN GROUP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
21.1%
FORMAL CHARTER,LONG-TERM PLAN/VISION
PRIORITIES SETBY OTHERTEAMS
18.2%
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 22
© 2018 Miller Heiman Group. All rights reserved.
To summarize, according to this data, 78.9% of sales
operations teams do not establish priorities using a long-
term, strategic plan. Through our sales enablement
research, we have become advocates for establishing a
formal charter as a critical component to building a highly
effective sales enablement discipline. The existence
of a formal charter makes it easier to set priorities,
manage expectations and measure success. In the sales
enablement space, we have seen a 27.6% improvement
in quota attainment for those organizations that are able
to execute on a long-term sales enablement strategy. Is
there a similar impact here?
Prioritization Impact
When we analyzed the four prioritization approaches
based on seller performance, one emerged as the
leader. Those organizations where sales operations
established a formal charter and long-term vision
out-performed all of the other approaches by a
minimum of 6.9%.
In contrast, those organizations where sales
operations’ priorities were set by non-sales-
operations leaders fell below the top-performing
group by 15.2%.
The study found no statistically significant difference between those organizations that focused on analytic
support and those that focused on operational and
technology-based programs.
It’s clear that a long-term strategic focus has the
optimal impact on performance. Furthermore, those
organizations where the sales operations team is
relying on non-sales operations leaders to determine
priorities are missing an opportunity to achieve better
seller performance.
Recommendations for How to Evolve Your Sales
Operations Function
Based on our research and engagement-work with
clients, here are four ideas for how to strategically
evolve your sales operations function, leveraging a
formal charter to ensure a focused and purposeful
approach to achieve your desired vision.
1. Clarify your sales operations’ vision, mission
and purpose:
Conversations with your senior executive
stakeholders should help you define sales operations’ role in supporting the organization’s
business strategy, not just the sales leader’s
revenue generation strategy. How is sales
operations perceived today, and how should it
be perceived in the future? What does a sales
operations function look like that sets the sales
force up for productivity in the digital age? Take
the time to mutually define the vision (where you want to go), the mission (how to get there) and the purpose (the reason why sales ops exists).
FOCUS ONOPERATIONALTECHNOLOGY
PRIORITIESSET BY OTHERS
Impact of Prioritization Approach on Quota Attainment Rates
53.1%
60.0%61.4%
68.3%
FOCUS ONANALYTICSUPPORT
FORMALCHARTER
AND VISION
© 2018 MILLER HEIMAN GROUP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 23
© 2018 Miller Heiman Group. All rights reserved.
2. Develop your strategy to get to your vision:
1) Define your internal customers – Sales operations supports multiple constituents,
from senior executives to sales managers
and field sales personnel. It is important to clearly define your vision specifically for each group so that you can properly manage the
expectations of your leadership team.
2) Develop strategy – Your sales operations strategy will have to combine two points of
view: your leadership’s revenue attainment
strategy, which is likely focused on the fiscal year’s revenue goal, and your overall business
strategy, which is multi-year. Analyzing how
these two strategic points of view affect the
execution of your sales organization (and how that might evolve over time) will give you insight into the strengths and weaknesses of
your sales system.
3) Translate to actions – Once your overall strategy is defined, you can define specific objectives for achieving your strategy and
translate these into programs and initiatives.
3. Map your strategy to a timeline:
Once your objectives and initiatives are defined, it’s very important to create and track a high-level
timeline. This timeline should cover multiple
years, with annual (or even quarterly) milestones. This timeline will not only help you focus your
team’s prioritization to your formal strategy
on an annual basis, but it will provide you with
a mechanism to manage expectations when
new initiatives are considered or updates to the
business strategy occur.
4. Define how to measure success:To ensure the success of your charter, a sales
operations team should not be measured
solely on overall revenue or quota attainment,
because these are tactical rather than strategic
indicators. Think about your role in driving
digital transformation, improving alignment
with your customer’s buying journey, and
assisting your organization’s business strategy,
and measure your sales operations team’s
progress accordingly. Measuring these kinds of
contributions in both tactical and strategic ways
can insulate your long-term vision’s value from
the potential fluctuations of quarterly revenue performance.
Sales Operations Leaders Need to Take Control
Less than a quarter of our respondents (21.1%) set sales operations priorities based on a charter or some
other sort of formalized long-term vision. Nearly as
many (18.2%) said they left their priorities up to other, non-ops leadership roles. The rest of the group were
relegated to narrow, task-based responsibilities such
as analytical support and technology programs. While
these are important areas, the lack of the charter or
long-term vision limits the scope of sales operation’s
role in the organization and their ability to make a
positive impact.
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 24
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Chapter 04 Forecasting Review
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 25
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“Forecast accuracy” remains an oxymoron, even
though having accurate sales forecast results in
operational efficiencies throughout an organization. It is one of the primary vehicles that executives use to
manage the expectations of anyone who has a stake
in the company, including board members, investors,
industry analysts, Wall Street analysts, employees
and, of course, the company’s other functional areas.
Though actual deals won have been less than half of
those forecast to be won over the past several years,
the good news is that in this study, which reflects greater participation by individuals with sales ops
responsibilities (see also Chapter 1), the win rates are up nearly 10 percentage points.
The improvement in overall win rates might suggest
organizations are finally getting a handle on predicting wins, but results vary – the average masks marked
differences in predictability/reliability based on the
level of rigor applied. A related question inquired
about the approach to forecasting (see below).The more rigorous the approach and the more
involved sales leadership (including success targets and measurement), the more accurate the forecast results.
Chapter 4: Forecasting Review
Forecasting Approaches
37.9%
CASUALREVIEWS
CONSISTENTREVIEW PROCESS
28.1%
© 2018 MILLER HEIMAN GROUP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
16.4%
STRUCTUREDREVIEW PROCESS
SUBJECTIVEAPPROACH
17.6%
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 26
© 2018 Miller Heiman Group. All rights reserved.
One contributor to poor forecasting is confusion
between “making your number” and making your
forecast. The difference is significant and can impact staffing, margins and, even, shareholder value.
Let’s say a salesperson has an annual quota of $2M and, for simplicity, $500K/quarter. She has eight deals (A-H of product X) in the pipeline averaging $100K each and gives an average, or overall, probability of
60%. She’s on the cusp of success with a forecast
of $480K ($800K X 60%) and, clearly, any additional win will put her solidly on plan, even slightly ahead.
But wait, what does “60%” mean? Without structure,
consistency and/or ongoing modeling (over time), it simply means it sounds better than 50/50 but is more
cautious than saying 90%.
This is a scenario familiar to all sales managers and
leaders where one salesperson’s “60%” is understood
as always optimistic, a second salesperson’s “60%”
is always pessimistic, and a third’s “60%” is realistic.
With informal or no structure, defining processes and/or rigor in identifying an opportunity’s place in
the sales cycle, all are subject to interpretation.
In the first salesperson’s case, what actually books are orders A and B (of Product X) at $100K each and mega-order M (of Product Y), for $300K. Her quarterly bookings are $500K – right on the money. She is celebrated – and rewarded – for making her
number, even though she has completely blown her
forecast. This is especially troubling when orders are
not identical units (Product X) but units the company has not anticipated needing to produce in quantity
this quarter (Product Y). In such cases, margins can be completely eroded, even as volumes are realized.
The negative organizational impacts are increased
when, as seen above, only 55% of the anticipated
(i.e., forecast) volumes are realized! Further, where did order M come from, and whatever happened to
orders C-H? M materialized from out of nowhere,
and C-H disappeared without explanation or, more
commonly, pushed out to a later date – a scenario
likely to be repeated over and over again.
What exactly is the problem? Let’s examine it through
the lens of barriers to accurate forecasting.
Barriers to Accurate Forecasting
Even those organizations using a formal review
process with structure, measurement and tracking
still lost 37.5% of the opportunities they committed
to close. What’s preventing our respondents’
organizations from improving their close rate and
achieving more accurate forecasts? The chart below
shows the main reasons (or excuses) as salesperson subjectivity, followed by lack of managers really
drilling into deals and the lack of forward-looking,
predictive data.
CONSISTENTREVIEWS
SUBJECTIVE& CASUAL
Impact of Forecasting Approach on Win Rates
49.9%
58.4%62.5%
FORMAL &STRUCTURED
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CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 27
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In reviewing the barriers above, two immediate
solutions are worthy of consideration: 1) increased sales process implementation and 2) decreased fear.
Readers of CSO Insights’ other reports will be
familiar with the sales process maturity model. The
overarching observation from more than a decade
of research is that higher levels of sales process
implementation correlate with higher levels of
predictability; hence, more accurate forecasts.
(The 2017 results can be found in our World-Class
Sales Practices Study.) As seen above, increased rigor, management involvement, structure and
measurement (i.e., accountability) all correlate with higher forecast accuracy, a finding that will likely prove consistent in future years, just as it has played
out with sales process implementation. To be sure,
the two go hand-in-hand, and it would be surprising
if they did not rise and fall together.
Let’s briefly discuss the second possibility here: Fear of telling the truth about current opportunities. Most
salespeople do not have enough quality opportunities in
their sales pipeline/funnel. They continue to drag poor
quality (i.e., unqualified) opportunities along and include them in their forecasts to avoid being hounded by their
managers for not having a sufficient volume (e.g., long-standing rule of thumb: 4X quota) in process. Salespeople forecast these poor or lesser quality “deals,” offering
their subjective assessment and/or rationalizations for
why they are valid or, at a minimum, possible.
At the same time, the second barrier to success is
managers failing to truly investigate the commits
their salespeople are offering. Managers, like their
salespeople, fear sending in forecasts that are anemic
and/or fall short of assigned targets. If one digs too
deeply into so-called opportunities, one might find the result of such investigation to be not happy news.
Between juggling the various subjective estimates
of individual salespeople and not really analyzing/
inspecting deals for fear of what might be found,
there is already considerable variability built into the
forecast. Layer on any of the other conditions – too
little, too old, or too new data, lack of technology or
lack of its adoption – and you have a perfect storm for
imperfect projections.
© 2018 MILLER HEIMAN GROUP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Salespeople are too subjective about close possibilities47.0%
Sales managers do not investigate their salespeople’s commits well enough37.9%
Reporting looks backward, we do not have enough predictive information36.3%
Information we have is not accurate enough32.2%
Limitations in the technology we use to manage forecasts24.6%
Not enough historical data to compare against24.3%
Barriers to Accurate Forecasting
We have no formal sales methodology19.6%
No major barriers, we are doing fine18.0%
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 28
© 2018 Miller Heiman Group. All rights reserved.
The “Right” Answer
It’s always tempting, when comparing your own
answers to a broad population, to wonder how you
compare and what those doing better are doing
differently. First, it may be worth discussing whether
there even is a “right” answer. Is 100% forecast
accuracy attainable or even desirable? From an
engineering perspective it would seem so, but from
a sales perspective, the effort to sell to forecast
can encourage behaviors that are not helpful or
are simply wasteful. Examples of activities that are
“not helpful” include only pursuing opportunities
we absolutely are assured of winning, being overly
selective and ignoring large and/or emerging
market segments. “Wasteful” activities could include
managers spending an inordinate amount of time
creating, updating, double-checking and reporting
forecast figures.
The end result might be winning 100% of forecast
opportunities, but the pipeline and forecast might
prove to be artificially constrained in several ways and not reflective at all of actual market conditions and/or potential.
Second, we may be searching for the “Goldilocks
Zone” with respect to forecasting and who is involved
in producing forecasts. When left on their own, sales
managers didn’t produce more accurate forecasts
regardless of how much time they allocated to doing
so. When sales managers spent between 15-20%
of their time producing their forecast, win rates
remained around 46.5%. When they spent more than
20% of their time on forecasting, win rates, in fact,
declined to 44%.
Similarly, sales operations involvement isn’t, by itself,
a cure. Peak achievement came with sales leadership
creating the forecast with sales ops regularly
involved. This was the most popular arrangement
and produced a win rate of 64.2%.
Again, with only a year’s worth of data, we are not
claiming a trend, but the data points toward the
most success being found with regular, consistent
and structured forecasts being developed by sales
managers with regular sales operations input.
The Path to More Predictable Results
Bringing increasing accuracy and predictability to
sales projections remains an elusive goal. The ability to
hire people, schedule production, commit to promises
and operate more efficiently are all more difficult when sales fails to close opportunities on time. Some
companies do better than others. Those with the most
rigorous approach lose only a third of forecast deals,
while those leaving forecasts to the impressions of
salespeople and managers lose over half.
Three elements contribute to more positive and more
predictable results:
• Increased involvement of sales leadership
• More structure and consistency in process and
less subjectivity
• Development of models and measurements
powered by analytics
When sales operations had minimal involvement,
forecast accuracy in this year’s study hit its nadir
(49.6%). When rigor and discipline replaced fear and subjectivity, forecast accuracy improved – a good
thing for all involved.
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 29
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Chapter 05 Utilization of CRM and Sales Effectiveness
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 30
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Picking up where we left off on the last chapter, where
we explored the barriers to accurate forecasting, the
words of W. Edwards Deming come to mind: “Eighty-
five percent of the reasons for failure are deficiencies in the systems and process rather than the employee.
The role of management is to change the process rather
than badgering individuals to do better.”
Access to solid processes, robust systems and
accurate data are necessary for salespeople to
effectively do their jobs, not just in terms of forecast
management, but also in nearly all the other activities
with which they are tasked. For the next part of
this study, we looked at the tools sales operations
personnel leverage to support salespeople in the
various aspects of their job.
The most ubiquitous system in sales today is the
core CRM system, comprised of capabilities such
as contact management, account management,
opportunity management, etc. Nearly all the study
participants reported having a CRM in place, with
84.5% of companies leveraging a commercially
available CRM vs. 15.5% opting to develop a CRM
internally. The first area of inquiry was to review the current usage of these systems and the impact they
were having on sales performance.
CRM Adoption and Sales Performance Results
The chart below on the left shows a summary
of the responses received when we asked study
participants to share the CRM adoption rate within
their sales organization. Here we see that the
nearly universal implementation of CRM systems
into sales organizations does not directly translate
into universal adoption. Only 45.7% of the study
participants reported an adoption rate of greater
than 90%, which we have long advocated as the goal
companies should target to achieve.
Going back five years to the data collected in the CSO
Insights 2013 Sales Performance Optimization Study,
the chart to the upper left shows that adoption is
slightly on the rise. While at first take this appears to
Chapter 5: Utilization of CRM and Sales Effectiveness
Adoption Rate of CRM System by Salespeople 2018
45.7%51% - 75%
> 90%
13.6%
© 2018 MILLER HEIMAN GROUP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
9.1%
< 25% 26% - 50%
9.5%
76% - 90%
22.1%
Adoption Rate of CRM System by Salespeople 2013
36.6%51% - 75%
> 90%
17.5%
© 2018 MILLER HEIMAN GROUP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
7.8%
< 25% 26% - 50%
13.3%
76% - 90%
25.0%
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 31
© 2018 Miller Heiman Group. All rights reserved.
be a positive trend, it begs the question: Does higher
CRM utilization result in better sales performance?
To answer that question, we segmented the sales
operations study data based on adoption rate as
related to outcome of forecast deals and revenue
target attainment. In the following table, we see
that companies with adoption rates of ≤75% have a noticeably lower win rate of forecast deals than sales
organizations with a higher adoption rate. However,
the difference in the percentage of salespeople
meeting or exceeding their revenue targets is less
pronounced.
When we dove deeper into the study data, a second
factor emerged. We segmented the companies
with CRM adoption rates of >75% based on the
level of sales process they had in place. To ensure
meaningful sample sizes, we combined organizations
with Random Process and Informal Process into one
group and those with Formal Process and Dynamic
Process into another.
The significant differences seen here show that high CRM adoption alone should not be the goal for sales
operations. Rather, adoption needs to be partnered
with a high degree of sales process formalization
in order to set the basis for achieving better/
predictable sales results.
The CRM Data Accuracy Challenge
In evaluating CRM issues surfaced in our other studies
over the past year, two major trends emerged that
sales operations needs to be aware of and, in many
companies, also address. The first of these is the confidence sales organization have in the CRM data. In the following chart, we summarized the input we
received from 1,200+ participants in the 2017 World-
Class Sales Practices Study. It is disconcerting to see
that only 24.9% of the study participants surveyed
expressed high confidence in the quality of the data in their CRM system.
< 75% ADOPTION
Sales Performance as Related to CRM Adoption
50.9%
58.9%
© 2018 MILLER HEIMAN GROUP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
> 75% ADOPTION
57.3%
62.3%
Quota Attainment Rate
Win Rate
40%
50%
60%
70%
Random/Informal Levelof Sales Process
Sales Performance when CRM Adoption>75% Related to a Company’s Level of Sales Process
46.5%47.7%
© 2018 MILLER HEIMAN GROUP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Formal/Dynamic Levelof Sales Process
61.4%
67.0%
Quota Attainment Rate
Win Rate
40%
50%
60%
70%
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 32
© 2018 Miller Heiman Group. All rights reserved.
Following up on that question, we asked for an
assessment of the impact CRM had on sales
productivity. The following chart shows similar
concerns about the value CRM delivers in terms
of optimizing sales performance as only 25.3% of
survey participants fully agreed that CRM enhances
the productivity of salespeople.
These two data points raise concerns regarding sales
operations relying primarily on CRM as the main
tool used to support salespeople. As we have often
pointed out, CRM is the foundation for the technology
stack that sales organizations need in order to be
able to measure, monitor, and ultimately, enhance
sales performance. However, it is far from the only
tool that groups like sales operations need to have
access to fully support the array of activities that fall
under the scope of their responsibility.
Creating a Technology Foundation for Sales
Performance
Reflecting on the words of Deming at the start of this chapter, systems and processes can either make
or break sales operation’ ability to achieve their
objectives. Here are a few process-related items that
sales operations should also consider as they create
a technology foundation for sales performance.
• To set the underpinning for confidence in/and usage of CRM, data cleansing and data
augmentation processes need be in place to
ensure the information in CRM is accurate and
current.
• Formalizing the sales process is required if
companies are going to get the full ROI from their
CRM investments.
• The ability to track the selling process within
CRM needs to be coupled with the ability to track
the buying process so that sales operations has a
comprehensive view of what is happening in the
pipeline.
In the next chapter, we will explore other technologies
that companies are leveraging to create robust sales
performance management technology solutions
platforms.
NEUTRALDISAGREE
Our Sales Organization Is Highly Confident in CRM Data
32.0%
17.5%
25.6%24.8%
SOMEWHATAGREE
AGREE
© 2018 MILLER HEIMAN GROUP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
NEUTRALDISAGREE
Our CRM System Significantly Improves theProductivity of Our Salespeople
30.3%
22.0% 22.4%
25.3%
SOMEWHATAGREE
AGREE
© 2018 MILLER HEIMAN GROUP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 33
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Chapter 06 Sales Tools & Technology for Sales Operations
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 34
© 2018 Miller Heiman Group. All rights reserved.
We’ve seen a great deal of technological innovation
over the past five years in Sales Performance Management (SPM) and Sales Enablement (SE) solutions. As a follow-up to our CRM utilization
chapter, we next wanted to understand what kinds
of sales tools and technologies are becoming
commonplace and which ones are gaining in interest.
While there are a tremendous number of sales tools
in the market, we focused on five primary areas:
• Sales Tools that support lead generation and lead
conversion
• Sales Tools that support activity and sales process
management
• Sales Tools that support sales enablement
content and training
• Sales Tools that improve seller efficiency/productivity
• Technology for general operations
The following chart summarizes the responses we
received sorted by the percentage of respondents
who reported these tools are currently in place. It
also shows the percentage of respondents planning
to implement these tools within the next 12 months.
It’s no surprise that lead generation/lead intelligence
and social selling top the current list. Organizations
have been heavily investing in the front end of
pipeline creation for some time. And we can see a
potentially emerging shift in investment towards
opportunity management technologies: Account &
Opportunity Planning, Sales Methodology & Workflow, Content Management and Prospect Engagement
Management topped the percentages in terms of
planned investment over the next 12 months.
In addition, more than one-third of our participants
indicated that they have already invested in and
implemented 20 out of the 25 tool categories, and all
25 tool categories had at least 10.9% of respondents
indicating an intent to invest in the next 12 months. As the
scope of this list demonstrates, most companies realize
that their CRM alone will not meet all the needs of sales.
Additional Takeaways from the List of Sales Tools &
Technologies Chart
Three key items surfaced when we analyzed the
implications of the full list of sales tools and
technologies. The first of these is a tool/training disconnect. Based on our past efforts to benchmark
sales transformation initiatives, most, if not all, of
the items on this chart come with the requirement
for sales operations and, potentially, the entire
sales organization to implement changes to the
way they are doing things. To facilitate that change,
salespeople require training to help them understand
how to optimally use the tools and how to integrate
them into their workflow processes.
As part of CSO Insights’ 2017 Sales Enablement
Optimization Study, we did a detailed analysis of the
quality and quantity of the various types of training
offered to sales organizations. Looking at that data,
some red flags become evident. For example, the utilization of social selling tools tops the tools list
on the previous page. Tools related to optimizing
coaching and pipeline forecast management also
received high rankings for current or planned usage.
Chapter 6: Sales Tools & Technology for Sales Operations
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 35
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Unfortunately, most organizations are not backing
up the implementation of these tools with adequate
education. As we see when reviewing the sales
enablement study data in the table below, of those
companies that offer training in these three areas,
more than half give themselves “needs a major
redesign” or “needs improvement” ratings.
A second trend that got our attention is the amount
of green in the chart. Organizations are clearly
planning to implement a lot of new tools in the next
12 months. Expanding the sales operations tool set
may very well be warranted, but we need to consider
the number of new technologies sales professionals
can realistically become proficient at using in a single year to avoid the mental meltdown that comes from
trying to absorb too much, too fast.
© 2018 MILLER HEIMAN GROUP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Lead Generation/Lead Intelligence57.3% 16.5%
Social Selling18.4%
Activity Mgmt & Tracking11.8%
Pricing12.3%
Revenue Mgmt & Sales Forecasting19.3%
Online Training & Coaching Delivery20.2%
Sales Tools & Technologies Leveraged by Sales Operations
56.6%
56.1%
51.1%
49.8%
Sales Methodology/Workflow48.2% 21.1%
CRM Data Cleanup & De-duplication14.2%
Content Sharing18.7%
Presentation Creation12.3%
Account & Opportunity Planning22.0%
Content Management20.9%
46.6%
45.2%
44.7%
44.1%
Proposal/RFP40.5% 15.8%
Sales Call Recording & Video Selling15.3%
Acct Mgmt/Qualification Scoring17.0%
Contact Mgmt (Excluding CRM)10.9%
Contract Delivery & Management17.4%
Analytic Platform Solutions16.6%
40.3%
40.1%
37.6%
37.3%
Prospect Engagement Management35.3% 20.7%
Predictive Lead Scoring18.1%
Customer Success Management18.9%
Sales Compensation Management14.3%
Partner Relationship/Channel Management14.9%
Automated Account Research19.0%
34.6%
30.9%
28.6%
23.7%
49.7%
42.8%
35.4%
23.2%
Gamification/Motivation18.0%23.2%
Currently in Use Planned in Next 12 Months
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 36
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Finally, based on our understanding of the SPM and
SE marketplaces, we need to point out that many of
the items on this list are available as point solutions
versus comprehensive tool suites. Therefore, the
level of integration between individual classes of
tools may well be far less than what sales operations
needs to fully achieve their goals.
Technology-enabled sales operations will be required
if sales organizations hope to achieve their goals
going forward, but companies need to fully consider
all the ramifications of doing so before they start making wholesale changes in tool sets.
The AI “X” Factor for SPM and SE Tools
Over the course of the past year, we have been doing
a significant amount of research into the implications that AI will have for SPM and SE toolsets. As part of
that analysis, we have evaluated over 45 AI solutions.
About half of these tools have already passed our
litmus test in terms of providing true AI-enabled
capabilities and insights.
In doing case studies of organizations that have been
early adopters of these tools, the early field-proven results are showing that AI can radically enhance
many aspects of how sales organizations operate.
We have found examples where implementing AI-
enabled tools has resulted in double-digit increases
in win rates and average deal size as well as similar
decreases in sell-cycle length.
This emerging AI technology transformation raises a
question. Should a company adopt a two-phase SPM/
SE tool strategy, looking to implement traditional
solutions that have been in the marketplace for the
past several years and then consider AI-augmented
replacement versions of these systems down the
road? Or should they start to leverage AI tools where
practical now?
The answer will be influenced by several factors such as a company’s culture, the challenges facing
sales teams, the tolerance a firm has for taking risks, etc. CSO Insights advisory services clients who are
interested in exploring the pros and cons of both
options are encouraged to contact their CSO Insights
analyst. We can set up a session to brief you on a full
array of traditional and AI-enabled SPM and tools
and then explore which options make the most sense
for your organization.
Recommendations for Optimizing your Sales Tool &
Technology Platform
Business strategist Jess Greenwood is credited with
observing that, “Data is the new oil. It’s only useful
Sales Enablement Study Sales Training Ratings
Needs Major Redesign
Needs Improvement
Meets Expectations
Exceeds Expectations
Social Selling 15.1% 41.2% 37.3% 6.5%
Coaching/Mentoring Skills
14.1% 41.1% 35.1% 9.7%
Forecast/Pipeline Management
11.2% 47.1% 35.5% 6.2%
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 37
© 2018 Miller Heiman Group. All rights reserved.
when it is refined!” Having access to robust SPM and
SE tools will be the only way for sales operations
to do the refining of all the information that is/will be available to sales organizations. To set the stage
for harnessing the power of data, we recommend
companies focus on the following:
• Ensure that there is ongoing collaboration
between sales operations and sales enablement
teams to create a unified vision for what a comprehensive sales optimization technology
stack entails.
• Prioritize which of those capabilities to implement
based on an understanding of which tools will
have the highest impact on sales performance.
• Create a time-based roadmap for implementation
that considers sales operations’ and the sales
organization’s capacity to assimilate new tools.
• Develop an understanding of all investments
needed to fully implement and support the
tools required to support sales performance
optimization and determine the negative impact
of “the cost of doing nothing” if you fail to do so.
With the rapid advancements in technology and
the increased adoption of advanced capabilities
like AI, sales technology will not only be a driver
of performance; it will also be a key differentiator
between sales organizations. Those that do sales
technology better than the rest will find themselves light years ahead in the market.
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 38
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Chapter 07 Takeaways and Recommendations
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 39
© 2018 Miller Heiman Group. All rights reserved.
Chapter 7: Takeaways and Recommendations
Throughout this report, we’ve shared numerous
data points, trends, insights and recommendations
regarding a function that usually isn’t in the spotlight.
After digesting all the data, and given the vast scope
of activities for which sales operations is responsible,
the lack of focus on this vital function is a surprise.
Sales operations deserves more attention than it
currently gets because the function literally designs,
builds, maintains and evolves the sales system that
serves as the foundation for everything your sales
organization does. To create a solid foundation, sales
operations’ overall strategy must be well aligned to
the organization’s business strategy, sales strategy
and current challenges.
Furthermore, this foundation needs to be ready for
the digital age, ready for the age of the customer.
This is the overall challenge we had in mind when
we composed our takeaways and recommendations
for this report. In this final chapter, we’ll summarize these takeaways and have a look, once more, at the
essential relationship between sales operations and
sales enablement.
The majority of study participants (63.9%) have a
dedicated sales operations team.
• In the technology industry, more than 80%
reported having a sales operations function.
Outside the technology industry, that percentage
dropped to 54.6%.
• As expected, sales operations teams are more
prevalent in businesses with over $250M in revenues with at least 80.0% of them indicating
they have a dedicated sales operations team.
Sales operations is a multifaceted function that
includes a broad set of different business activities
and different levels of involvement. Sales operations
is most likely to take on a leadership role in the area
of technology management.
• Strategic Planning Support: This group of activities
covers compensation modeling, customer
analysis and reporting, territory modeling, sales
organization structure and channel definition. Over a third reported ‘heavy involvement’ or a
‘leadership role’ in the areas of Customer Analysis
(38.0%) and Sales Structure Definitions (37.1%).
• Sales Performance Analysis: This group of activities
covers forecast and pipeline management,
salesperson performance, sales process
definition and leadership communication. Organizations are regularly involved in each of
these activities with nearly half reporting heavy
involvement or a leadership role in Forecasting
(46.8%), Sales Performance Metrics (45.3%) and Sales Process Definition (44.3%).
• Sales Readiness & Enablement: This group of
activities covers sales enablement, deal desk and
quote management as well as RFP and proposal
management. In this group of activities, sales
enablement seems to be the most important
activity, although only 15.1% report taking on a
leadership role in this area.
• Technology Management: This group of activities
covers CRM definition and update strategy, sales tool management, operational and tech
change management as well as marketing
operations. The most common activities in which
operations took on a leadership role were CRM
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 40
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Definition/Update Strategy (24.5%) and Sales Tool Management (20.1%)
Sales operations teams use methods for setting
priorities: A strategic and holistic approach that is
based on a long-term vision outperforms all others
in terms of sales productivity measured by quota
attainment.
• 21.1% reported setting their priorities based
on a long-term vision and leveraging the power
of a charter that explained how they planned to
reach that vision. This group achieved a quota
attainment of 68.3%.
• 18.2% reported setting priorities outside of sales
operations. With quota attainment of only 53.1%,
this approach cannot be recommended.
• 60.7% use two different approaches that lead
to medium levels of quota attainment: 32.1%
are more focused on operational aspects and
technology, while 28.6% set their priorities based
on analytical decision-making support.
• Creating a charter becomes a mandatory aspect
of successful sales operations leaders.
Sales operations teams approach forecasting in
different ways. A formal approach, with accuracy
targets and measurement in place, outperforms all
others. Dealing with barriers to forecast accuracy is
equally important.
• Organizations that rely on sales managers to
leverage their personal experience to determine
their forecast and those organizations that provide
some guidance to their sales managers but do
not leverage any particular structure to ensure
consistency do not perform well, achieving only a
49.9% win rate for forecasted deals.
• In contrast, organizations that leverage a
consistent review process, which includes sales
leadership input and some predictive forecasting,
out-perform the more “subjective” and “casual”
organizations by 8.5%, achieving a win rate of
forecasted deals of 58.4%.
• At the high end, organizations that leverage a
formal and structured forecast review process,
which includes sales leadership input, predictive
modeling and the tracking of forecast and
pipeline accuracy with regular measurement,
out-performs the “subjective” and “casual”
approaches by a minimum of 12.6%, achieving a
win rate of forecasted deals of 62.5%.
• Dealing with barriers to accurate forecasting is a
key challenge for sales operations: Salespeople
are too subjective, sales managers don’t leverage
their coaching time to investigate the accurate
forecasts, and the lack of enough predictive
information were reported to be the most serious
barriers to accurate forecasting.
CRM adoption is essential, but shouldn’t be a
stand-alone goal. Instead, the level of sales
process maturity plays a key role when it comes
to CRM adoption and increased productivity and
performance.
• CRM adoption has improved over the last five years. We witnessed a modest increase—from
61.6% of our respondents (2013 CSO Insights
Sales Performance Optimization Study) to 67.8% in this study—in organizations with adoption rates
greater than 75%.
• Organizations with greater than 75% CRM adoption
rates show win rates improved by 6.4% and seller
quota attainment rates improved by 3.4% versus
organizations with lower than 75% adoption.
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 41
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• In addition, we drilled into the maturity of their
sales processes and found that those organizations
with greater than 75% CRM adoption that have
a formal or dynamic sales process out-perform
organizations with only a random or informal
sales process by 14.9% for win rates and 19.3%
for seller quota attainment rates.
Sales technologies are exploding, but education is
lacking.
We’re seeing an explosion of sales and marketing
technologies that surround the CRM system and can
be leveraged to make salespeople more productive
and effective. In this study, we looked at tools that
support lead generation and lead conversion,
activity and sales process management, and sales
enablement content and training, as well as those
focused on overall salesperson productivity.
• Across 25 categories of tools, 20 of them were
used by at least one-third of respondents.
• All 25 tool categories had at least 10.9% of
respondents indicating an intent to invest in the
next 12 months.
• Most organizations are not backing up the
implementation of these tools with adequate
education.
The Future? We’re Optimistic
When we look at the big picture, the story that emerges
from the study results shows both encouraging news
and cautionary news. It’s encouraging that many
organizations have a sales operations function at
some level – almost 64% have a dedicated team. It
also appears that sales operations doesn’t struggle
as some other disciplines do to get involved in areas
where they can make an impact. In Chapter 2, we
discussed the results that showed sales operations
regularly involved in 15 of the 16 activities cited. Sales
operations at least has a foundation for creating a
larger, more positive and more sustainable impact on
sales performance.
The cautionary news is that sales operations may
have reached a plateau – one at which they will
remain unless sales operations leaders finally accept the leadership mantle. There is no greater evidence of
this that the finding we discussed in Chapter 3, where only 21.1% had a formalized charter or strategy. The
rest of sales operations organizations either let other
executive leaders decide their priorities or they were
relegated to a specific function such as analysis.
The study shows that sales operations can have far-
reaching, positive impacts on vital areas such as
forecasting process, sales technology usage and
CRM adoption, especially when coupled with process
automation. These results should not be used stand-
alone. Instead, they are the fodder that should feed
internal discussions around what is possible and what
your formal sales operations charter should include.
CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study Page 42
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CSO Insights 2018 Sales Operations Optimization Study
How to Engage CSO Insights
As we continue to track sales operations in future studies, we will uncover additional areas of improvement
linked to best practice programs, tools and processes.
We encourage you to read our other research studies on sales enablement, sales best practices and sales
leadership. If you have questions or comments regarding this report or wish to discuss how to refine your sales operations strategy and maximize your sales operation budget, please don’t hesitate to engage us at info@
csoinsights.com.